Thread: Fewer Students Mean More Sacrifices

Fewer Students Mean More Sacrifices
By MARILYN BROWN

mbrown@tampatrib.com

Families are losing bus service. Middle school students are losing sleep and teachers are losing jobs as Florida's student population sinks with the economy.

School districts that have not already experienced those changes will soon be considering them - and more, state leaders say.

"In my entire career, I have never, ever seen anything like this," said Ron Blocker, the superintendent of Orange County Schools and an educator for 32 years. "What makes this so different is it is so deep and so broad."

After losing 3,800 students during the past three years, Orange County cut courtesy bus service, started middle schools earlier and high schools later, and eliminated 560 teaching positions, Blocker said.

At least half of those teachers were left jobless.

"There were not enough seats at the table when the music stopped playing," Blocker said.

That's a dramatic change for those who were told a few years ago that the teacher shortage was a statewide crisis.

More of Florida's 180,000 teachers will likely lose jobs, said Mark Pudlow, spokesman for the Florida Education Association.

"If everything stays the same, you're going to see it in '09-'10," he said.

What started as a slowdown in public school enrollment three years ago is now the biggest drop in state history, with nearly 17,000 fewer students this school year, said Carolyn DuBard, an economist with the Florida Legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research.

For years, student enrollment statewide climbed at least 40,000 annually. Then, between the 2006 and 2007 school years, the numbers fell by more than 2,000. The total decline is more than 30,000 in the past three years.

A slowdown, or even a decline, would seem to be good news for a state that had been struggling to find room and teachers to handle the growth, packing 40 or more kids into some classrooms and recruiting teachers from other states.

The flip side, though, is that when the kids disappear, so do the jobs. That includes school staff members and people working with the companies that build and equip schools.

Building - and the construction jobs that go along with it - is winding down, and principals have their pick of teachers from stacks of resumes.

"In most districts in Florida, education is the largest employer in the county," said Bill Montford, chief executive officer of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents. "When something happens to the school district anywhere in Florida, boom, it shakes everything up. ... It's the mother lode."

Enrollment is expected to continue to drop, school officials say. For how long is the question.

"Some say 12 months; some say 18 months; some say five or six years. Some say we'll never get out," Montford said.

The Hillsborough County School District is the biggest employer in the county, as well as a major buyer and builder. Instead of gaining 6,000 or more students each year and building as many as a dozen schools a year, the district saw enrollment go flat two years ago.

This school year, Hillsborough lost 1,692 students - equivalent to the enrollment of a high school.

"Everything's an anomaly now," said Bill Person, Hillsborough's general director of pupil placement and support. "Everything's upside down."

After a frenzy of building schools and extra classrooms, the district has thousands of empty seats to fill. Some are in five new schools opening in August that will relieve the pressure on crowded schools.

"We've already turned off the spigot and stopped the construction," Person said.

Other counties are doing the same.

"We're delaying, postponing and deleting," said Margaret Smith, superintendent of Volusia County Schools, where three schools under construction are the last in sight for a district with three years of losses, including about 1,400 students this year.

Volusia cut more than 1,000 positions in two years, Smith said, leaving 60 to 75 teachers without jobs this year. Bus service was "seriously reduced" this year, and four small schools were closed. All ninth grade sports were cut this year, and junior varsity spring sports were eliminated this semester.

Orange County saved at least $5.7 million this year by starting high schools later and middle school earlier, but parent pressure may force a shift back, Blocker said.

No one is sure where all the students are. They are not transferring to private schools, said Skardon Bliss, executive director of the Florida Council of Independent Schools. Nonpublic schools have about 12 percent of students, he said.

"Everyone's waiting for the other shoe to drop in the spring when re-enrollment contracts go out," Bliss said of private-school parents making decisions for August. "We're worried about next year."

The number of students coming into Florida compared with those leaving has gone from net gains of more than 66,000 a year to 5,000 last year, DuBard, the economist, said.

Notable among counties losing students are densely populated Pinellas County, which is "in a serious decline right now," she said, and Lee County, which grew until this year.

The county showing the highest percentage of loss, Alachua, is disputing a state report that says it lost 1,625 students. A new software program is to blame, said Keith Birkett, Alachua's assistant superintendent overseeing the reporting. Districts have until March for final corrections.

All but 15 school districts in Florida lost students this year, and those that gained didn't add many.

St. John's County, in northeast Florida, is the exception, with 1,174 more students this year. Superintendent Joseph Joyner said his top-graded schools draw families working in Jacksonville. Still, he, too, switched middle and high school start times this year.

The county that grew the least - Glades, in south Florida - has six more students than last year in its four schools.

The growth could have been from just one family moving in, said Superintendent Wayne Aldrich. But it was his district's one charter school on the Seminole Indian reservation that draws students from Okeechobee County to study the Creek language that put the county in the plus column.

"For the first time in history, we're stabilized," Aldrich said. "This is a fluke. It will not go on."
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/jan...es/news-metro/

Everything's an anomaly now," said Bill Person, Hillsborough's general director of pupil placement and support. "Everything's upside down."


Nooooo, everything is not an anomaly and everything is not upside down.

This kind of drop in enrollment means that schools are being restored to their RIGHTFUL students....American citizens and the children of LEGAL immigrants.

Don't fret.....you'll get used to it and even come to like it

This article failed to mention Florida allows students to stay home and take classes via the internet which many have done because of the influx of so many IA's, ESL learners which created over crowded conditions in our schools.

I don't see how these people can think anything will work when there isn't a base to work from.

You can't allow un-limited immigration, and illegal immigration and then an exit,..... a totally faltering economy in one state and mass migration to another and think you can sustain it. Just like you can't have a state totally catering to retirees while making it unfriendly to young families. It has to be a balance. By the time we get to responding to the "special needs" of a specific group....they are long gone by the time it comes to reality and those left are stuck with the results. You can see it in just farming areas or specific manufacturing areas, or just totally run cities dependant on any one specific group or resource......the places that succede are the balanced ones. You can't just rob Peter to pay Paul and consider that advancement.

I will never forget some members pics of Detroit....looked like a ghost town and something I expected to see in a 3rd world country. That's why I don't believe this open borders, lets all be global in our job hunt.....because we leave areas in destruction and others under extreem pressure to cater to a specific group only in years, to just be left a ghost town when the demographics change. It is doomed to eventual failure when it caters to one specific group of anything. Tourist areas fail when that's the sole income and they base everything on what's best for the tourists and no-one else. Turn an area into the Mexico quarter and no-ones going there but hispanics, and if that changes for any number of reasons...it's a ghost area. We are neck deep in McMansions and no jobs left to support them. An area filled to the brim with strip malls and no businesses to fill them because the taxes are so high....in order to fund the mass temporary migration to the area to meet the demand for schools for a group that has suddenly dropped off , grown-up or left.

When I lived in Nebraska....weather can be the need for something more than just farms. I've lived in tourist areas where a hurricane can change things for years. It has to be a balance. You can't rip things from one group to cater to another and expect it to run in the long term.

What the article fails to mention is the cost savings to tax payers of those school districts.

What the article fails to mention is the cost savings to tax payers of those school districts.

Can you explain that? Normally I 100% agree with you, but I don't get this one.

It is the simple law of supply and demand. With all the illegals and anchor babies demanding more, the supply of education HAD to be increased at the cost of teachers having to pay out of their pockets to supply their classrooms. With rising real estate prices, school districts started freaking about being able to build enough schools to meet demand from kids whose parents most likely didn't pay any taxes at all. But I am proud of the Lee County School District as they took a vacant K-Mart building and turned it into an elementary school in San Carlos Park. While I was there, the fancy Metro Mall in Ft. Myers went bankrupt and was closed. When I was there during its last days, I started to look at the high ceilings and started thinking about a reuse for the building: a school or perhaps individual living units for a retirement home, even office space. It could easily have been divided into two floors.
During the heyday of rising property values, developers ruled as county commissions saw the increase in tax dollars for individual units while the property in agricultural land paid minimal property taxes. It was developer and government greed. While the tourism bureaus promoted eco-tourism, eco was destroyed on a daily basis. Pine forests were being cut down for new residential buildings because no one wants pine needles falling on the Mercedes or Cadillac in the driveway. The Caloosahatchee River began to turn green because of water dumping by Southwest Fla. Water Management District (or Weapon of Mass Destruction) from Lake Okeechobee. Shrimp and crabs that used the estuary as a nursery began to die. Shrimp fishermen, a $55 million benefit to the county, could no longer afford the fuel. The river emptied into the Gulf and tourists complained it smelled from fish dead from red tide and the color was as brown as oversteeped tea. My manatee no longer came by in my canal for his lettuce, and the dolphins in Estero Bay moved out into cleaner water. Then there were the Asian green mussels that started swamping local shellfish, because of the bilge water expelled from foreign ships in Tampa Bay.
This was no longer the corner of Florida I loved, so I sold my house for a small fortune and left. And just like real estate prices going through the roof, it was all collapsing while very few admitted to any mistakes.

We moved out of Fl to the Northeast primarily because we saw how bad the schools were even in the so-called "better districts"....there were at the time year long plus waiting lists for any parochial or private schools.....two new elementary schools were built near us and by the date they opened they already had ordered "trailers" for extra classrooms because of the increase in pupils from the date of construction commenced to the date the schools actually opened.

Less students means a better teacher/student ratio....means less over-crowding...means that school administrators can pick from the cream of the crop for employment decisions....it's a win-win situation. Less students also means taxpayers don't have to reach into their pockets every year to fill school budget needs. Notice that the only ones that are whining are the school district employees...but assuming they are competent and skilled...they should be able at some point to gain employment in the education field or by private tutoring/consulting.